Tejus had loosened his grip on me, but his arms still created a barrier, stopping me from running headlong into the passage after my brother.
“We need to follow him!” I cried out, twisting my body around to face Tejus. I looked up into his eyes, pleading.
“We don’t know what’s down there, Hazel,” he replied firmly.
“Yes, we do! Benedict is down there, and we need to go after him! It’s my brother. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, but it means something to me.”
I regretted the words as soon as I said them. Tejus frowned, his mouth tightening. I had hurt him, that was obvious, and it only served to show how reckless I was feeling.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but we don’t know if the barrier around the castle is going to stay down. Let’s follow him now, before it’s too late.”
Tejus’s jaw twitched, but I could see he was about to relent.
“I’m coming with you,” he snapped.
“Okay.”
“What?” exclaimed one of the ministers. I thought it sounded like Lithan. “It’s sheer madness—”
“Silence,” Tejus retorted, holding up a hand to stop the ministers from all chattering in support of Lithan. “Our lack of knowledge on this entity is starting to infuriate me. This human boy may well be the only one among us who knows more than next to nothing about what it wants or what its plans are.”
Tejus released me fully from his arms and leaned down to get a better look inside the passage. The torches that I had laid down along either side of the wall had blown out, and Tejus ordered one of the guards to fetch us more. The guard returned a few moments later, carrying two large torches. Tejus handed one to me.
“Stay behind me,” he ordered, and took the first step into the narrow passage. He practically had to bend double to walk through it, and I wondered who had built this castle originally—was it sentries as I had originally assumed? There were so many parts of it that seemed more fitting for humans, with narrow arches and small doorways running throughout the servant quarters. I tucked the question away to ask Tejus at a later date—right now I wanted us both focused on bringing Benedict back where he belonged.
The torches threw shadows along the passage, and soon the light from the hallway behind us dimmed completely and only darkness lay ahead. Other than the sound of our footsteps, and the short exhales of irritation from Tejus as his back scraped along the damp stone, there was silence.
“How long do you think this thing goes on for?” I asked, more to break the oppressive silence than anything else.
“I’m not sure,” Tejus replied. “The passage isn’t included on any of the castle blueprints I found. Either it originates from before the castle came into existence, or it was kept secret for a reason. Possibly both.”
“Is there anything the ministers here don’t keep secret?”
Tejus grunted in agreement. “They have been given far too much power by my father and the rulers before him. I intend to put a stop to that. Eventually.”
When I become emperor, was the unspoken implication. I hoped that he would put a stop to the ministers’ secrets. They had caused enough damage already.
We walked a little further in silence, and soon I could see light coming from up ahead.
“What’s that?” I breathed. It wasn’t the yellowish glow of torchlight that I might have expected. Instead, the lights were piercingly bright, and reflected off the walls of the passage in a myriad of different colors: reds, golds, pinks and greens, all dancing in the darkness.
Tejus didn’t answer me, but we simultaneously picked up the pace. The lights grew brighter, almost blinding, until Tejus came to an abrupt halt in front of me. I peered around him with difficulty—the passage was so narrow I could barely see past his broad frame. In front of us was a stone wall, a single piece of granite that held an elaborate pattern of stones. They flickered at intervals, creating a hypnotic swirling form of bright colors. I stared at it, dumbstruck.
The stones.
“We’ve found the lock, haven’t we?” I asked Tejus quietly.
“I think so.”
He reached out, locating two grooves where stones were clearly missing from the formation.
“Two missing,” he said softly.
“How many stones do you think need to be removed until it’s unlocked, all of them?”
“I’m not sure. I suppose there’s no way of knowing, perhaps until it’s too late.” He removed his fingers from the grooves and started to run his hands along the top and sides of the granite wall. There was no alternate pathway that Benedict could have taken—somehow he must have passed through the wall.